Bryan Stevenson

One of the things that was immediately fascinating to me about this case is that Monroeville, Alabama, is the community where Harper Lee grew up and wrote the story To Kill a Mockingbird.

And so Monroeville...

prides itself on being the birthplace, the home place of that story.

And so every year they put on a play, the streets are named after characters in the book.

It's a big deal.

You can go to the courthouse where they filmed the movie, scenes from the movie, and people will say, oh, you can go stand where Gregory Peck stood.

They romanticized the story of To Kill a Mockingbird.

They couldn't solve the murder.

And after several months, the community was very frustrated with the police and the prosecutors for not solving the crime.

The young 18-year-old was killed and

broad daylight in the middle of downtown Monroeville.

And the pressure was building, and we believe that led them to Mr. McMillan, not because they had any evidence of his guilt, but because Mr. McMillan had had an affair with a young white woman in the community, and word had spread about that.

And that caused them to focus on him.

Now, it turns out that at the time of the murder, Mr. McMillan was actually at his house raising money for his sister's church, so he was surrounded by 30, 35 people.

A police officer who had gone to the place to buy, they were having a fish fry and selling sandwiches.

So a police officer bought a sandwich and noted, bought a sandwich from Walter McMillan at almost the exact time of the crime, which was 11 miles away.

But the police arrested Mr. McMillan.

They coerced two people to testify falsely against him.

They put him on death row before the trial took place.

Is that legal?